Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to visit Russia next spring for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to move forward dialogue over a long-standing bilateral territorial dispute, diplomatic sources said Thursday.
The beginning of arrangements for Abe's Russia trip is in response to an invitation extended to him by Putin to visit a local city in Russia other than Moscow, when the two leaders held talks in November, the sources said.
After the shelving of Putin's year-end visit to Japan, the Japanese government is now looking into rearranging the Russian president's trip for the first half of 2016, according to sources.